How To Maintain Your Bedroom For A Healthier Sleep

It’s not easy to get a good night’s sleep nowadays, and that is likely due to not knowing how to maintain your bedroom for a healthier sleep.

However, sleep is necessary for us to restore our powers and gain strength for one more day full of challenges.

If we’re lucky, we should be getting around 8 hours of sleep each night.

To make the most out of these hours, we need to ensure that the bedroom environment is calming and welcoming sleep. The following maintenance tips will help you maintain your bedroom for a healthier sleep.

Create a comfort zone for better sleep

Your bed is like a sanctuary that allows you to sleep well. Every part of it needs to be perfectly fitted to your needs. You need a comfortable mattress, which is not too firm, but also not too soft because it can hurt your spine.

You need to change your linen regularly and wash it with a hypoallergenic detergent to avoid irritants and make sure all your senses are calm. Every single element of your bedroom needs to be calming and predispose you to sleep. From the colour of the walls to the shape of the furniture and the softness of the textiles.

Colours, which will calm you down easily, are white, blue and silver. Bright colours like red and violet can wake you up, so keep them for your living room.

How to wash your bedding

The frequency in which you wash your bedding is really a personal choice. Nevertheless, studies have proven that the infrequent washing of the linen is directly linked to all kinds of horrid consequences for some people, like skin irritations, allergies and even pest infestations by bed bugs and dust mites.

Dust itself seems like a small issue for most people, but its contents are actually nasty. Some of them include hair, dead skin cells, parts of dead bugs and a lot more. Change and launder your linen at least once a week. Try to take a shower before you go to bed, this will remove all the dirt you bring from the outside.

Turn everything inside out during the washing, to protect the colour prints. Use warm water instead of hot, to avoid shrinkage. Ironing is a good way to kill all the germs from your linen.

Maintain Your Bedroom For A Healthier Sleep

How to dry and store your bedding

Most sheets and covers are fine with tumble-drying, but you need to check the instructions on the label, just in case. The dryer can be very harsh on some gentle fabrics, so it’s best to avoid that risk. You will avoid wrinkles if you remove the sheets a little earlier from the dryer, but the moisture can lead to mould. This is why ironing is your best friend – it will eliminate the remaining wrinkles, it will dry the linen and it will kill any remaining bacteria.

When it comes to storing, avoid placing your bedding in plastic bags or containers, they capture all the moisture. This will lead to mould and mildew formation. Instead, store your sheets in a dark, dry and clean drawer or closet shelf. If you’re storing bedding for a longer-term, you can line it with some tissue paper, to avoid fabric yellowing.

How to maintain your mattress

Many people ignore their mattresses for the longest time; however, cleaning them regularly is important. In time, your mattress will lose its shape and a good beating and washing will straighten it up a bit. In addition sleeping on a fresh, steam-cleaned mattress is beneficial for people with asthma, allergies and other breathing abnormalities, such as excessive snoring.

Just like your  bedding gets a regular clean, your mattress can also benefit from a good monthly clean. Here's how:

  1. Remove the linen and clean the mattress with a vacuum cleaner.
  2. Use a soft brush and go over to clean all the dust, crumbs and other bits off your mattress. In order to avoid attracting pests like ants and bed bugs, don't eat in your bed. In addition, definitely don't do as they do in American movies going in bed with your shoes!
  3. After the vacuum cleaning, take generous amounts of baking soda and spread it all over the mattress. Leave it to work for at least an hour. The baking soda will absorb any moisture and stains, leaving the mattress disinfected and deodorized.
  4. Vacuum the baking soda off the mattress.
  5. If there are any visible stains, you can spot clean them with a paste of white vinegar and baking soda. Apply small amounts, scrub gently in a circular motion, then rinse with water and leave it to dry.

 

Ventilate the room properly

The quality of the air in the room you sleep in can also affect your sleep. This is essential not only for people with asthma and dust allergies. Trouble breathing at night can lead to snoring and unwanted awakenings during the night that will disturb the smooth running of your sleep. To avoid these things you should regularly sanitise the air conditioning unit and maintain a clean sleeping atmosphere.

The indoor air is stagnant, which makes it more dusty and dirty than the outdoor air. So, make it a ritual to open the window at least twice a day, to refresh the atmosphere indoors. Inspect the ventilation system twice a year, remove the dust and dirt from there and wash the filters once every few months, depending on how dusty the area you live in is.

Proper pillow maintenance

Pillows gather all kinds of dirt and allergens over time, including all kinds of pollutants coming from our heads – hair, oils, various cosmetics and dust brought from outside. A great way to protect your pillows is to get pillow protectors.

They are special covers, which go under the case and act as a barrier protecting the actual pillow. You only need to wash them once a month in the washing machine. Even though protectors are effective, you still need to wash your pillows once or twice a year, depending on usage. Here's how:

  1. First, check the label to make sure your pillow is machine washable. Most of them are, but it’s still smart to double-check.
  2. Use a mild liquid detergent, because powders can leave a residue in the seams and any crevices.
  3. The washing machine needs to be balanced, so wash two pillows at a time, if possible.
  4. The excess detergent on the pillow can lead to rashes, so make sure it’s properly rinsed by running the rinse cycle twice without any products.

Calming fragrances enabling better sleep

The smell is a very prevalent sense and sometimes strong or unpleasant smells can keep you awake at night, making it difficult to relax. Therefore, you need to use smells to your advantage. There are plenty of fragrances, which have a proven calming effect on people.

To name a few, you can try lavender, chamomile, vanilla and roses. You have a few options to introduce these smells into your bedroom. Look for laundry detergents with these fragrances, buy scented candles or use essential oils dispersed in a diffuser. Just remember, never leave candles unattended, they are a fire hazard.